This invention relates to a microwave browning or searing utensil. Microwave ovens have become popular for cooking food primarily due to the speed and economy of operation resulting from the microwave energy heating the food product directly. However, since there is no concentration of heat on the outer surfaces of the food product, no browning or searing of the food product occurs. Many consumers consider the lack of browning on food products a drawback. The appearance and taste of microwave oven prepared food products are different, and various attempts have been made to produce browned foods in microwave cooking.
One means of producing browned foods has been to provide utensils which will heat in a microwave environment. The food surface in contact with the heated utensil surface will become hot enough to become crisp and browned much as is the case in cooking with a range. Some of these are massive and require a fairly long time to heat such as microwave absorbing ceramics. Others such as resistive films may heat to higher than desired temperatures and be subject to mechanical failure unless covered by another layer of glass, ceramic or similar material. A film embedded in glass or ceramic, of course, is fairly massive and slow to heat.
The apparatus disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,941,967 to Sumi et al. employs a ferrite ceramic or silicon carbide ceramic with added silicon dioxide or titanium dioxide to lessen the electrical resistance of the ceramic to produce greater heating from the microwave energy in the microwave oven.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,830,162 to Copson discloses cooking vessels made of ferrites in the form of alloys or ceramics.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,266,108 to Anderson et al. discloses use of ferrite adjacent to a microwave reflecting member and wherein the thickness of the ferrite material may be selected to produce a heating element which will heat to a predetermined temperature which is a function of the Curie temperature of the ferrite. The Anderson patent refers to frit, a material used in ceramics and refers directly to ceramic materials. However, there is no further teaching as to how the ferrite material is formed into heating elements.